God is Self-existent (Part 1)

That’s not the way He did it. He did it through narrative. He did it through His commands. He did it in other ways. So the intention is not to know facts about God. That is not the purpose. If we come away from the Bible thinking that all that is required is to know things about We have missed it entirely. The purpose is to know God personally, to know the one which is eternal life.

And so that’s what we’re going to try to do. So let’s pray. And then I’d like to introduce you to the first attribute of God that we’re going to look at this morning. Our Father, we thank You so much for the opportunity to meet together Your people. I pray, please incline our hearts to Your Word and to Your will, but especially, Lord, to Yourself. Lord, give us a heart that is so polar opposite than what is natural to us.

Lord, that aversion to You, like when Adam and Eve hid from You in the Garden of Eden for fear of You because their conscience was defiled. Lord, give us, I pray, a heart that would run to You. And as we think upon these scriptures and these truths, Lord, they’re profound. Help us to see them even more deeply than the things I have prepared, but not just myself, but also each and every person here.

Help us to engage our heart and our mind on what is the highest thought that a man can think, to think upon the true and the living God. And so, Lord, we look to You, guide our study, not just this morning, but also the study as we move forward and look at the different attributes. Lord, please reveal Yourself to us personally. Help us to understand and illuminate our mind on these things that we might truly stand in awe of who You are.

We pray also for the kids downstairs who are right now, Lord, they’re hearing the truths of scripture. They’re being reminded of those things. The memories are being built. Please bless them. And Abbey, as she teaches them, give them understanding and grace. Lord, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen. All right, the first attribute we’re going to look at, we’re going to begin, I don’t think we’ll finish if history is any guide anyway, is God’s self-existence, God’s self-existence.

As Sam pointed it out, the technical and theological term for that is called the a-see-atee, a-see-atee. A, if you’re writing it down, it’s a-se-i-t-y, a-see-atee of God. And here’s just a simple definition. I know you all know what self-existent means, but I’ll just give you a definition to go through the paces here. Self-existence is the existence of a being, person, et cetera, by virtue of intrinsic nature, independent, independently of any other cause.

Now what’s so interesting and ironic is that when I looked that up, because I’m a word person and I looked it up because I wanted to see what the dictionary said about the term self-existence, is that the definition applies to a single person in existence. So they could have just put God and just left it at that, and that would have been right because it can’t apply to anything or anyone, anything else whatsoever.

The existence of a being. Which one? There’s only one that this applies to, so I thought that was kind of ironic. So I want to introduce this to you in the most obvious passage that would touch on this, which is Exodus chapter 3. So let’s go there and look at these verses, Exodus chapter 3. This is when the Lord introduces Himself to Moses. Exodus chapter 3. Now just as a side note, if you look at verse 2 of this chapter, it says this, and the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked and behold the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed.

Now this same angel of the Lord that is appearing to Moses is going to speak to Moses. So don’t get confused. When you see the word angel, it’s not always referring to a ministering spirit like we read in Hebrews. Sometimes God Himself is referred to as the angel of the Lord, and so when you read that in the Old Testament, you need to put that in your mind.

Here God is called the angel of the Lord, but we know that it is He identifies Himself as Jehovah, as the one true and the living God. And so just keep that in mind as we go. So Moses stops to look at the bush that is burning but is not consumed, and verse number 4 says, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses.

And he said, here am I. And he said, draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And from verse 7 on, the Lord describes what He knows about the plight of the children of Israel in Egypt.

Verse 10, come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And Moses said unto God, who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt.

Ye shall serve God upon this mountain. And Moses said unto God, behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers had sent me unto you, and they shall say unto me, what is his name? What shall I say unto them? Now pause here a second. Verse number 13 is telling us Moses poses a question to the Lord and says, essentially, who do I tell them you are?

Who are you? That’s essentially what he’s asking. Now he’s asking for a name, but a name is a label to identify the identity of a person. So Moses is asking God, and this is key to understanding what we’re going to see in just a minute. Moses is essentially asking God, who are you? Who do I tell them you are? And in that context and in answer to that question, the Lord says, verse 14, and God said unto Moses, I am that I am.

And he said, thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, I am, had sent me unto you. Now what’s interesting is the Lord doesn’t give his name, you know, Jehovah, the capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, the reference to God’s name. He doesn’t tell him that. Now they’re related, the words are related in Hebrew, but it’s not directly, he doesn’t tell him directly, my name is the Lord, like he says in other places.

When the Lord answers the question concerning his identity, he does so by saying, I am. I am. Now that’s hard to understand. That’s profound. There’s a lot of depth to that. Now you think about the term I am, and basically what you have here is you have a verb, in some languages, this is unfamiliar to us in English, this is not the way we speak in English, English has a different kind of grammar, but in some languages, you can have the subject and the verb all together wrapped in the verb only.

So the verb will have like an ending that will tell you that the subject, even though it is not stated, is I. Like does anybody here speak Spanish? You could say, hablo. If you said hablo, you’re saying I speak, even though you didn’t say the word I, it’s understood. This is exactly what’s happening here. The Lord is using the be verb. I am is, are, was, were, be, be, be, being, been, become, you remember that from grade school, right?

He’s using the be verb, to be, but he’s calling himself that. He’s saying indeed, as we read in the text, I am, which is a statement of existence, you know, it’s all philosophical. I think therefore I am, you know, the philosophers, the famous philosophers have talked about that. God, just pause, I’m going to go slow on purpose because I want us to think it through. When God identifies himself, he identifies himself by the be verb, I am.

It’s not very, it’s not very revealing of a lot of attributes of God, but one thing it does reveal is God’s self existence, God’s self existence. You know, most of the time when we identify ourselves just in human language, because this is human language, God is speaking to Moses, obviously if God spoke in any other way, he wouldn’t have understood. So God uses human language, and human language absolutely is limited in its expression of an infinite, we haven’t gotten there yet, an infinite being, a being who is outside of time, outside of creation, some of that is related to what we’ll talk about today and this attribute, but human language is limited to humanity, right, but the Lord utilizes it to tell us something about him and he has given us as humanity the intellectual capacity to at least somewhat grasp these attributes of his, right.

We certainly can’t know the fullness of it, but this is one way he says, he says I am. No matter where you go back in time, no matter what point in what we would call history, although that doesn’t matter to him at all, he is. He exists before there was anything, he was, he is, he shall be, it always applies in every case. When we however identify ourselves, we do it in relation to some other thing.

Like if I were to say to Liberty, I would say, say I didn’t know Liberty, I would say who are you? And she would say, Liberty, that doesn’t really help me at all, that’s just a label, right, that’s a label we use to identify the person, but if I were to say, if I were to ask her an even deeper question like who are you, no, no, no, not your name, who are you?

What would you say, can I put you on the spot? Who are you? You would probably say something like, well, my mom and dad are Rob and Janice, Harris, I’m a Harris, okay, and that helps, right. Well who are the Harrises? Who are Rob? Who is Janice? You’d say, well they’re, and you’d go back to that, and you might describe different characteristics of this person, well Rob is this age, or whatever, you might say something like that to identify yourself.

Here’s the thing I want you to understand, in the example of Liberty, if I were to ask her that profound question, who are you, right, she’s going to have to identify herself in relation to something else, right. That’s the only way she’s going to be able to give any kind of identity. In other words, there is some other thing that’s not her that is the foundation for her own existence, for her own identity.

There’s something else that must be first for her to identify herself. But God himself is the first basis and foundation of all things. So everything ultimately, even the example of Liberty, everything ultimately can go back and kind of anchor its identity and what it is to God, if you think about it. Liberty, her dad and mom are Rob and Janice, their parents, their parents, their parents, all the way back to the beginning you have Adam and Eve, who’s Adam and Eve, the first man, what’s a man?

Well it is a creature, a creature, what’s a creature? It is a thing, where am I going? That God created. So even a creature, even you go all the way back, you anchor to that point and that’s the starting point. Now you could go further and you could say, well, who’s God? And God says, I am. You see? That’s the foundation of all things that exist is God himself.

It’s profound. I mean it’s just profound. At Josh and Marty’s wedding on Friday, we had strangers come in and of course friends and family and all that. And sometimes people would come up to me and I would introduce myself and I would say, I’m the groom’s father. The groom being the one that everybody knows, groom and the bride being the one that everybody knows. So I anchored my identity to theirs.

But it goes all the way back, just in the example of liberty, just like at the wedding, it all goes back to God. Now what if I was at the wedding and someone said, who are you? And I said, I’m the groom’s father. And they would know me in relation to Joshua. But what would they have thought if I had said, if they had said, who are you?

And I said, I am. You know what that would have sounded? That would have sounded extremely, extremely arrogant and presumptuous, right? Wouldn’t it? Especially for someone that knows the text of scripture. They wouldn’t have understood anything I’m saying. I imagine Moses probably was like, okay, and probably spent the rest of his life trying to figure out what in the world God is really talking about. And that’s what we’ve been doing this whole time.

Every book has been written on this subject. Of course, I would never say that. I would never say I am. But this is exactly what God said. And he is the only one who has the right to say it like this. All right. Let’s look at a few verses to show you. But before we do, I want to read this quote by Tozer. If you’re interested, as we go through these different attributes, there’s a book written by A.W.

Tozer, which is one of the kind of classics. It’s a very, it’s brief. It’s not like a full-fledged theology book or anything like that, but it’s called The Knowledge of the Holy. And it goes through the various attributes of God, but it does so in a way that it covers them and the scripture, but it does kind of condense it. And it gives you also kind of a devotional aspect to it, which is what we’re going to do as well.

We’re not going to just be pure theology in our study. So if you’re interested in that, this is a quote from that book, The Knowledge of the Holy by Tozer. It is not a cheerful thought that millions of us who live in a land of Bibles, who belong to churches and labor to promote the Christian religion, yet may yet pass our whole life on this earth without once having thought or tried to think seriously about the being of God.

Few of us have let our hearts gaze in wonder at the I Am, the self-existent self, back of which no creature can think. Such thoughts are too painful for us. We prefer to think where it will do more good, about how to build a better mousetrap, for instance, or how to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. You know, you think of those high thoughts.

And for this, we are now paying a too heavy price in the secularization of our religion and the decay of our inner lives. And I think he’s on to something. Low thoughts of God produce superficial faith, superficial walk, superficial relationship to God. And I think he’s on to that. There is something to be said about meditating upon God, because you can do that until you die and you’re not going to exhaust the thoughts.

That is a good thing. You know, Philippians chapter 4 tells us, whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are just, honest. You know, all those things in Philippians chapter 4. Is God in there anywhere? I think he definitely fits pretty much every description in Philippians chapter 4, to think on these things. Let’s look at Isaiah 41. Isaiah chapter 41. I would challenge you, I would challenge you to take up, I know you might think to yourself, I have a lot to do.

I get it. I get it. But remember the subject of our lessons here is God Almighty. He is worth your time and my time in meditation. He is worth that. Your job, as important as that is, your family, that’s important too, obviously, all of those things are important, but you can find some time to meditate upon God a little bit. You can. I can. Definitely. Isaiah 41 verse number 4.

Verse 1, the Lord says, keep silence before me, O islands, and let the people renew their strength, let them come near, then let them speak, let us come near together to judgment. Drop down to verse 4, just to give you a context. The Lord’s speaking, he says, who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning, I the Lord, the first and with the last, I am he.

It kind of echoes that Exodus chapter 3. Look at Isaiah 43 verse number 10. Isaiah 43 verse number 10. This is the single verse that is the foundation of the cult of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you want to know it, here it is. This is it. Isaiah, well this is one in Psalm 88. Some of you have that memorized, the one where it says, the Lord is my name, Jehovah is my name, whatever it is.

But anyway, this is one of them. 43 verse number 10. Year my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me and understand that I am he. See, just stop a second. That ye may know and understand that I am he. What does he say? You see, the Lord says that, but he’s not really saying anything, except that he is expressing his existence, his self-existence.

He’s not really making a statement about himself, except the fact of himself. That ye may know and understand that I am he. I am the self-existent one. Before me, now he goes on a little bit further. This is key, and we’re going to see it again and again. Before me, God says, there was no God formed. Stop right there. God formed? You know what that tells you?

This is not the I am. Because the I am was not formed. He is self-existent. There is never a period in time when he is not. That’s what I am indicates. So that means any God that’s formed is by nature, it cannot be God. That’s what the Lord is saying here. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. In the context of false gods who are created, he says, I am he.

Isaiah 48. Isaiah 48. Verse number 12. Isaiah 48 verse number 12. Harken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel, my called. I am he. I am the first. I also am the last.

See, when he says, I am the first, I also am the last, you know what? If you really think about that, it reminds us of the next verse we’re going to go to. So let’s just go ahead and go there. Revelation chapter 1.

I am he. At least two times, let’s see. Yes, two times we’ve seen, Isaiah 41, 4, 48, 12, we’ve seen that the Lord says, I am he, right, closely connected with his referring to himself as the first and the last. He’s connecting first and last. You get Revelation, you have Alpha and Omega. It wouldn’t be in the Old Testament because those are Greek letters. But when you get to the New Testament, when Greek is the language in question, it’s Alpha and Omega, first and last, same thing, right?

Revelation 1 verse 8, he connects I am with first and last. Let me get there myself. Revelation 1 verse number 8. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord. Notice here again in the New Testament now, the Lord connects this concept of first and last, Alpha and Omega, with the I am. Here’s what he says, which is and which was and which is to come.

And just in case we don’t know who we’re talking about, the Almighty. Which is and which was and which is to come. You know what that is? That is human language trying to wrap itself around the I am. You go back in the past, what will you find? God, I am. In the present, you find God, I am. You go at any point in the future, what do you find?

I am. But if you stand in one place, temporally, like we are right now in history, was, is, shall be. This is that very same concept. What’s interesting is, I’m going to kind of show my hand a little bit, this passage in Revelation is not applying it to, we might say, God the Father, but to God the Son. But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. So, we have about ten minutes.

About ten minutes. There are two primary kind of features of God’s aseity, his self existence. So if you want to write these down, you can write these down, and we’re going to look at verses that show us this very clearly. The first one is this. God has no original cause. God has no original cause. You could actually say it like this. God is the original cause of all things.

Now, if any of you have ever studied creationism, that’s one, when you look at it from an apologetic perspective, that’s one of the key kind of waypoints. One of the key foundations is when you start talking about science and the God of science, which is exactly what it is, and I’ll prove it to you probably next week. When you start looking at that, there’s always an insistence that someone give an explanation for God, the original cause of God.

You know, they’re always searching for the original cause of the universe. It’s the Big Bang. This magical event, this magical event that happened where there was nothing, and then there was everything all at once. It is logically impossible, right? And so they applied a first cause to nature itself, and this just made their way, their little magic wand, and thus it is. And yet they scoff at what is plainly revealed in scripture that God himself is the first cause.

He is the original cause of all things. Okay, so if you wrote that down, here’s a little bit of explanation. God is the only thing in existence, whatever that means, okay, but as we understand it, use words, God is the only thing in existence that never came into existence. That has always been in existence. And when I say existence, the reason why I kind of balk at that word is because it’s not, God’s existence is not the same as ours.

Our existence is in this material universe that he created. And God is, if we can call it that, is something that transcends all of that. Every other thing besides God himself, and there is no exception, every other thing had a first cause for its being. Every thing that is has God as its first cause. Look at John chapter 1, if you would. John chapter 1.

You see, when you understand this truth, and I know as Christians, all of us that are believers are generally speaking, even in our culture, there’s a certain kind of base understanding that nobody created God, you know, it’s kind of understood. And there’s a lot that goes into that, but when we really consider it and think about that fact, the self-existence of God, you know what it does?

It reorients our relationship with everything else. It must. It reorients our relationship to trees, and to one another, and to every created thing, because now everything is set in the context of God being the first cause. And so that changes the way we view it as well, to include things in science, things in nature, all of those things. When you flip on the understanding, like for instance, say someone’s, they’re into evolution, and God to them is science.

When that person, their understanding that God is the first cause of all things, when that flips on, well, that changes all of science now. It doesn’t change necessarily the facts of the material universe, but it definitely changes everything about that, because now God is in the context of it. Okay? John 1.3, this proves this. John 1.3 says this. I’ll just read one and two and then get down to three.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and in case you missed that, he continues, and without him, this is the Word now. Was not anything made that was made? Now the Word is identified in these verses in verse one as, and the Word was God.

So there’s God, there’s who it is, okay? The Word was God, and then you get to verse three and it says, all things were made by the Word, and without the Word was not anything made that was made. So if anything came into existence, it was made, it came into existence because of the Word, who is God, verse one. You know what that is? That’s a biblical proof of God being the first cause.

If it came into existence, he calls it. Okay? Look at Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one. All right, chapter one, verse number, verse number 16. Chapter one, verse 16. Again, in biblical language, this is, this is God is the first cause of everything. If it exists and came into being, it did so because God caused it. Okay? So here’s the thing. If the thing came, and this is a lot, now the logical part of this, so you have the scriptural, and from the scriptural truth, you can build, with limitations, but you can build a logical kind of framework, which is this.

If a thing came into existence and has an origin at all, right, it can’t be God. That’s the argument. That thing cannot be God. Yesterday, when we were doing our evangelism, the last door that we knocked on was a lady that came to the door, and she was a psychic medium. She was a psychic medium. Well, in the conversation, and, you know, I’ll just tell you this.

Psychic mediums of this day and age are not like they used to be when I was a kid, because she did not say what I expected she was going to say. But one thing she did say, one thing she did say was she described the trees and many other created things in terms of that they’re all part of the same God energy. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God and His self-existence.

Those things have a cause. God is the cause. Therefore, they cannot be God. Here’s the key thing, okay? The self-existence of God, this attribute, the assiety of God, is one of the identifying attributes of God. In other words, no thing can be called, rightly called God if that thing does not have this attribute. Now, the good thing is there’s only one thing that does, which is God Himself, right?

So this identifies, this is an essential and identifying attribute of God. Again, in the book, The Knowledge of the Holy, it says this, quote, God has no origin, said novation, and it is precisely this concept of no origin which distinguishes that which is God from whatever is not God, that one thing. And you know, when I was a missionary, one of the things that was a big deal is when you’re on a mission field in a pagan culture with pagan faith systems and such, what you find is they apply the term God to a lot of things.

Parents are God. Idols are God. Spirits are God. It’s just loosely applied. It’s almost like it means anything of a higher plane than I am can be God. That’s why it can be applied to parents. They called it, which is God at home, God at the house. And the thing is, though, that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the word. It’s a misidentification. Why? Because no thing, no thing that has, that does not have the attribute of self-existence can rightly be called God.

This identifies God. And so that’s what we would tell, maybe not in those exact words, but that’s what we would tell people. Well, who made those? Oh, so you’re telling me your parents who have parents are God? What about their parents? And their parents? And their parents? And their parents? What about the man who made the idol? Is he a bigger God than the idol? And so it goes.

And that’s all built upon a scriptural truth that God is the origin of all things. All right. I think we can get through the next part. Here’s the second one. All right. First one. First one. God has no original cause, or He is the original cause of all things. Number two. God is dependent upon nothing. God depends upon nothing. God is not dependent on anything for His existence.

For when we are first introduced to God, Genesis 1, 1, when we are first introduced to God, no thing exists whatsoever. And He already did. So that means He didn’t depend upon anything. And the kind of downstream point, the principle kind of downstream from that truth, or built from that truth, is this. If God depended, depends upon nothing and never has, then that means He needs nothing.

And this is where it gets good, but I’m not going to be able to get to it today. This is where it gets good. God needs nothing. He doesn’t need you. He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t need our church. He doesn’t need our praise. He doesn’t need our righteousness. He doesn’t need anything. Anything. At all. Look at Job 22. We’ve got three verses, and then we will be done.

Job 22. Job 22 gives us the words of Eliphaz. Remember, the book of Job, it can be confusing at times, but remember, the three friends often gave you good doctrine wrongly applied to their so-called friend Job. Job’s the one that said so-called. How miserable comforters you are. But they often have right doctrine. They just don’t apply it right. And here’s an example. In Job 22, verse number two, Eliphaz says this, Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself?

The answer is obviously no. Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous? No. Is it gain, or is it gain to him that thou makest thy ways perfect? Obviously, no. The Lord’s not lacking anything that Job is right, or because Job isn’t righteous, or for any other thing that we do. Look at Psalm 16. Psalm 16, verse number two.

It says this, O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, thou art my Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee. Good is good, verse three. It does help those that are the saints and they’re in the earth, verse three, but it has no benefit to God. Then lastly, look at Acts 17. Acts 17. Paul’s preaching on Mars Hill in Acts 17, verse number 24. Now, I do want to give you a couple of comments here.

To whom is Paul preaching here? He’s preaching to the Greeks in Athens. They’re pagans and idolaters. They do not believe in a one true God like Paul is speaking. So he’s trying to address that reality. He says, he mentions the altar to the unknown God, which is one of many, verse 23. And then in verse 24, he introduces the true God. Now, here’s what I want you to see.

How does Paul identify the true God to these people who do not know or believe in the true God? He says this, verse 24. God that made the world and all things therein, the Creator, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things.

That’s the first cause. That’s the origin. He’s saying God is the first cause and he needs nothing. And you know what he’s doing? He’s using this aseity of God, this self-existence attribute of God as the proof for the one true God. See what I’m saying? He’s identifying the true God by this single attribute. This is what I meant when I said this attribute is an identifying attribute of God.

Right? And so we’ll have to break off there and return to our study and hopefully close it out. For this attribute next week, let’s pray together.